


Eight Post-It Notes Written in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

by proxydialogue



Series: The In-between Verse [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, Meta, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 16:19:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proxydialogue/pseuds/proxydialogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The ending snuck up on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eight Post-It Notes Written in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Shit,” he says when he checks his pockets. 

He’s ruined the pattern. And he’s out of postcards. And the minutes are getting away from him. 

“Everything alright, sir?” The boy with the broom asks him. He has brown eyes, though the left one is nearly blind so his head is constantly tilted to one side to favor the right; and then his lopsided head gives him lopsided expressions, which means his friendly smile is skewed and a tad unsettling. But he has a good heart. 

_It was only forty seven seconds_. 

The boy’s name is Charles; it’s a good name, Chuck approves. It was given to him by his grandmother when his parents tried to name him Nasmo. (They were high.) 

“Uh, yeah, sorry. You wouldn’t have anything to write on, would you? Anything at all?” There is a little bit left, some fragments he shouldn’t ignore. 

Charles looks around the room with his eye, biting his lip. He holds his broom naturally, gracefully, like an extension of his body. When Charles grows old he will wave kindly at the commuters driving by as he sweeps the morning dust off his patch of sidewalk on Drinker street. 

“Hang on,” he says, and disappears into the back of the café. 

Chuck counts the seconds he must wait. One hundred and twelve. 

_And only forty seven down yesterday, on two whole postcards. God damn it. Damn it. Damn_. He isn’t ready. 

Charles re-emerges with a small blue square about half an inch thick; the remains of a post-it pad. He hands it over to Chuck with a rueful shrug. “It’s the best I could find,” he explains. They don’t look like much: not like the music in the mind of a genius, or the crashing of storm fronts, or the naming of all the winter stars, or the distorted reflection of the sky…they look pathetic. Like they will never be enough. Like if Chuck covered every inch of every post-it in America he would still be short one. 

They look like little blue leaves falling dead from the branches of a diseased Elm tree. Chuck takes them with a shivering feeling in his stomach. 

“It’s fine. Thanks,” he says, and he nods at the poor boy even if he can’t manage a smile. 

“Sure,” Charles dusts away to the four corners of the room. 

Chuck opens his pen and stabs it into the top corner of the first blue square. He feels mildly sick. His heart is all clenched up and knotty. A week ago he was certain this culmination was still years away, that his boys had more learning to do. He hasn’t even decided on a final sentence. 

Then the narrative fell apart in Arizona, and now he just has this handful of moments left. His three best characters don’t need him anymore. 

What a bitch _that_ is. 

Chuck writes. He’ll write until the words dry up. Until the story kicks him out like a disgruntled landlord. 

 

 

Sam is sitting in the passenger seat watching Dean’s reflection in the window. Dean is frowning at the sky, tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel. The seven hundred year old Norway Pine they pass, standing almost alone in a field of Azalea’s, is about to come shattering down under the lightning strike of the building storm that creeps along behind them— 

 

—Castiel crouches lower to the dirt to inspect the caterpillar he has inadvertently stepped on. He’s never killed anything by accident, but he felt the spark through the sole of his foot when the little bug’s soul crackled out. He acknowledges a small sadness. Dean leans over his shoulder and pats his back in sympathy— 

 

—It takes him twelve tries, then the air comes rushing into his lungs. Dean coughs, clutching at his cramping stomach. He puts a bullet through the head of the bitch that kicked him and steps back blindly until he finds the crook of Cas’ arm—already reaching out for him, an impatient harbor—and the alley blinks away. He lands on unsteady ground— 

 

—Dean and Cas are outside with beer. Sam catches them in the middle of a bizarre moment when he glances out the motel window. Dean was leaning forward into his hands, sitting on the hood of the Impala, and Cas was kneeling to pick up Dean’s phone as it dropped. Now they are face to face, like a weary king and a restless knight, glances flickering— 

 

—Cas considers how Dean and Sam always walk in step with each other. They equal one whole unit together. Because of this, Castiel doesn’t really believe there is room for him. But whenever he goes to see them, Sam always smiles and Dean always pulls up a third chair. So Cas continues to answer them, and keeps looking for the cracks where he might slip in— 

 

—He can’t help but wonder: _What if no one is watching anymore?_ He never wanted all his shit written down, but now that the chronicles are over…what is a story without a reader? What if he really was just some plot device in an unrevised draft? Dean has tried calling Chuck. But that number now reaches a used book store— 

 

—“You just need to get laid. Unwind,” Dean means to joke, but the words are grim and he’s holding Castiel’s head up in his hands. Cas is dead tired, maybe he’s dead wrong, maybe he’s dying. Dean’s face is the closest horizon. “I believe God has moved on,” Cas whispers. There it is; Dean shrugs: “Maybe _we’ve_ moved on from _him_ ,”— 

 

—Sam and Dean and Cas are arguing on a bridge about a wrong turn Dean made twenty miles back and there’s a one handed gardener watching them. Gardner waves at them with his free arm, forgets in that second that he doesn’t have a hand, but they don’t see him. They’ve missed too many goodbyes in their lifetimes to notice one more slipping past. 

 

 

He sticks the post-its, one after the other, in sequence along the edge of the table. Chuck puts down enough cash to cover the bill, leaves his pen with the tip, and gets up with tears in his eyes. It’s embarrassing. But goodbyes are not his thing. 

He goes to a pizza parlor in Chicago and keeps his eye out for a gray mustang. 

“Just you sir?” asks the waitress. Chuck smiles at her and sighs the stardust from his shoulders. 

“Actually, I’m waiting for a friend.” She makes a noiseless “Oh,” and takes his order, glancing curiously at his red, puffy eyes. Chuck blows his nose noisily in a napkin. 

“Alright?” she wants to know. Chuck nods away her concern. She smiles carefully at him and slips her pen into the pocket of her apron. 

“Do you have the time?” he asks suddenly, just before she walks away. She checks her watch. 

“Um. Two sixteen.” 

“Thanks.” 

“Sure.” Her name tag says _Stephanie_ , which is strange. Chuck would have pegged her for a Jessica.


End file.
